Messages

I did not want to blow my source in Gary, but I wanted to determine just how close the reactor was to the China Syndrome. I dashed off an email to Dad asking about golf, the clog in his bathroom sink, and whether he was still hacking away at the Nigerian Embassy's website.  Maybe he had picked up other pursuits, like sudoku or bocce. Those sorts of seventy-something parents are out there, the ones who devote their golden years to cognitive pilates and early happy hours.  I see those people in the Celebrex commercials.  

My father wrote back at 3:20 am, perhaps preparing for the time change.

Dad found his sherpa through the Nigerian visa process in the local congregation, further deepening my slide toward atheism.  Who offers to walk a pyromaniac through the formula for napalm?  Apparently, the lay reader every other Sunday. Regardless, with his visa now in process Dad also secured his booking via Frankfurt to Lagos.  Again, I was wont to wonder whether this agency was also on retainer with international organ merchants. The bulk of Dad's email dwelt on the quirks of Orlando airport's parking garage, which is apparently a nasty cat's cradle but he was cocksure about his ability to find a spot on the third level and have a straight shot to the better Auntie Anne's stand. He offered few thoughts about Lagos Airport, or the greater Niger Delta. 

Captain Smith’s iceberg reports. NASA’s late night phone call with the manufacturer of Challenger’s O-rings. How many disasters feature that last moment but for which someone had paid heed, leadership books would be poorer for illustratively avoidable fucks ups? I decided that Cassandra needed a cabin on this cruise to ignominy and possible kidnapping for ransom.

I sat down and carefully considered what would make for an unambiguous message of warning and caution? I thought about a drawing that channeled Munch and "The Scream," sort of like the signage that might adorn the Yucca Flats nuclear site for the next thousand seasons of “Survivor.”  But, that would just be me drawing out my emotions.  Verse and melody?   Perhaps a remix of Nine Inch Nails and Looney Tunes?   Ultimately, it’s about the opener. We needed more Top Gun adrenaline-soaked Kenny Loggins than a Gershwin-scored airline safety video.

“I sense you are satisfied with a long and eventful life, do not let it end in Nigeria.”

I posed all the questions that I would have asked if I were his travel agent, or his barista. What is your communications plan, do you know how to switch out your SIM cards?  Do you know what SIM cards are?  They are not found in Uno.  Have you arranged local transportation through your hotel, and do you have a plan to confirm their identity? We are way beyond inverted dates, my friend. Walking around the local dog park is not sufficient training for Denali, so why don’t you unlace those “On” shoes and take the Cliff bars out of your bag and catch the airport shuttle bus back to bocce?  

I sent the email. I cooked dinner.  I found solace in the ballads of Phil Collins.  And then, I received a reply.

“I am not so old that I cannot take advice from my son. I’ve decided to cancel my trip to Nigeria.”

Later that week, my father slipped in the shower and stripped a ligament from his femur.  He then began a six month period of convalescence, therapy and rehabilitation.  Of his leg.  I set aside my readings from Christopher Hitchens for Thomas Merton and reconsidered my thoughts on transubstantiation.   

Is that it, a Hallmark ending without a guest turn from Wilford Brimley?  Was that it?  Or was it over in the same way that a disaster movie is finished when Godzilla has leveled Fisherman's Wharf with radioactive diarrhea and saunters back toward Guam to find Imodium?